One of the biggest changes in our society is the shift from prevention to reaction.

Civic participants don't aim to make life better merely for members of the group. They want to improve even the lives of people who never participate.

Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity.

Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.

Prior to the internet, the last technology that had any real effect on the way people sat down and talked together was the table

The change we are in the middle of isn't minor and it isn't optional.

To have a discussion about the plusses and minuses of various forms of group action, though, is going to require discussing the current tools and services as they exist, rather than discussing their caricatures or simply wishing that they would disappear.